The vessel was 80% worn out and needed investment, but it was sold for three times more than the estimate, ARMA says.
The Agency for Investigation and Asset Management (ARMA) successfully held an auction to sell the Russian tanker Nika Spirit, previously known as Neyma, which was arrested in the Ukrainian port of Izmail back in 2019. The vessel was sold for three times more than the estimated value. This was reported by the ARMA press service.
According to the agency, the tanker was 80% technically worn out and required significant investments in restoration – at least 20 million hryvnias. Despite this, the agency managed to sell the vessel for 6.43 million hryvnias, which is almost three times its initial estimate of 2.4 million hryvnias.
The auction was held through the state electronic platform Prozorro.Sales and brought together four participants. The winner of the auction was the company “Alfa Group 77”, registered in the city of Kremenchuk. Its director is Vitaliy Marchenko.
“This case is an example of how the sale of arrested vessels can directly replenish the State Budget of Ukraine. Currently, ARMA is managing 16 arrested vessels. And our principled position is that such assets should be transferred to ARMA specifically for sale, and not for management,” said ARMA Head Olena Duma.
History of the vessel
The tanker Nika Spirit was built in 1989 as a vehicle for transporting oil products. During its service under the Russian flag, the vessel was called Neyma. It was detained on July 29, 2019 by a court decision when it arrived for repairs in Izmail. The owner at that time was Altomar Shipping LLC from the Krasnodar Territory of the Russian Federation.
The vessel was directly involved in the incident in the Kerch Strait in November 2018, when Russian security forces seized three Ukrainian warships (“Berdyansk”, “Nikopol” and “Yani Kapu”) and 24 Ukrainian sailors. The tanker was used to block passage through the Kerch Strait.
The “death” of Russian tankers near Kerch – what is known
Recall that on December 15, 2024, two Russian tankers began to sink in the Kerch Strait off the coast of temporarily occupied Crimea – “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239”, each of which was carrying more than 4 tons of fuel oil. The vessels split in half due to strong waves.
The tanker accident near the Kerch Strait occurred because the Russian vessels “Volgoneft-212” and “Volgoneft-239” were river-class and unsuitable for sailing in the open sea during a storm. As expert Andriy Klymenko noted, the weather conditions significantly exceeded the permissible parameters for these outdated vessels, built in 1969 and 1973.
